Where Are Ron and Ellen?
Indonesia: 30 November 2010 - 15 March 2011
Ron on the road to Geumpang, Indonesia, December 2010
Yogyakarta
18 January 2011
Afton, Virginia, USADear family and friends,
Here is Ron's report from Yogyakarta. He's now in Tretes, searching out the home where a friend of ours lived in 1954 when he was a boy; his father was a civil engineer working on flood control. It is just the kind of quest Ron loves, and I hope for an interesting future report as a result.
Here at home, I'm still working gradually to restore order after our construction project. I actually hung some pictures last weekend, so it is beginning to look like lived-in space instead of having that bare look that indicates someone either moving in or moving out. Unfortunately, I am still heating with wood, as the geothermal system which was supposed to have been operative around the time Ron left on 30 November is still not up and running - repeated delays with equipment. Very frustrating!
Love to all,
Ellen
To see photos from the night market in Yogyakarta, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see photos from the Sultan's Palace and Bird Park in Yogyakarta, click on the thumbnail at the left.
17 January 2011
To see photos from Borobudur and Prambanan temples near Yogyakarta, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Yogyakarta, Java, IndonesiaHello, my dear,
Yogyakarta (using the spelling from the Lonely Planet and not spell-check). Tonight at 00:47 I leave Yogyakarta (which they pronounce as "Georgia") for Surabaya by train and then will catch a bus to Tretes to locate Allen H's home where he lived as a child. Tretes pronounced "Tray-Tess" is reported to be much cooler because of its higher elevation.
Here in and around Yogyakarta, I have been more like a tourist taking in the famous and historical sites by bus and foot. One day my Dutch friends, Peter and Rixt, and I hired a driver and van to visit two World Heritage sites: the Buddhist Temples of Borobudur and the Hindu temple complex of Prambanan, both dating from the 9th Century AD. I understand Borobudur was only used for around three hundred years and was replaced by Prambanan, and today the prevailing religion is Islam.
It was a 12 hour day beginning at 5 am, and included stops for sunrise, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a silver processing shop, and a lot of walking. I was disappointed by Borobudur, perhaps because I have been to Ankor Wat which dwarfs it and was build later incorporating many of the ideas from here. Also, there was only the one temple, while Prambanan had more temples and places to wander around. Perhaps one of the more interesting stops was a small village built around a river that was filled with the ash and lava from the eruption of Gunung Merapi (fire mountain), the volcano which erupted a couple of months ago. They had lots of equipment trying to open up the river bed so the water after rain storms would flow in the river and not the village. 600 people died in this village from the heat and suffocation. Merapi does really tower over the region and the city of Yogyakarta.
One of the main points of interest in Yogyakarta is the Sultan's Palace and grounds, located halfway between the coast and volcano Merapi. The palace was closed the first time I tried so I just wandered around, meeting a young guy who was full of information. I was looking for the bird park and he walked me there, a couple of kilometers away. As we walked I discovered he was a tour guide (I should not have been surprised) but was not working that day. He took me by all the back lanes and avoided the main roads which were not as pleasant for walking. On the way we visited the water palace, which was damaged by the 2006 earthquake, and the underground mosque which was also damaged. He told me the Sultan would visit the water palace and go up into a building between a large pool and a smaller more private one. There he would throw a flower and the harem wife that caught the flower would some to the private pool and later spend the night with him. (On one of my tours there were pictures of the past Sultans and I heard the guide say as he took a group around how many wives and children each had.) I found the young guy to be very interesting and of course provided a tip as well as a shiny penny for good luck.
The bird park had been moved from near the Sultan's palace to a new site built for it, which was much nicer but not as convenient for the tourist. I think a better name would be "Pet Park," since they sold all kinds of pets besides birds, including dogs, cats, snakes, turtles, gerbils, mice, squirrels, etc.
The Sultan's Palace was walled and then there used to be a wall around the grounds, 1.5K square. While in the Sultan's time there were a few hundred people living within the walls and working for the Sultan, today there are 39,000 people living within the walls, but most of the wall has been torn down and sold for bricks before there was a law against such practice. All this I learned from a 59 year old retired guide as I was wandering around in an area outside the palace but within the walls of the grounds. He made fun of the current guides as the "Mafia" who made up information and tricked tourists. As a matter of fact, I had paid for entrance, but not a guide, to the Palace, and was very disappointed - and my new friend pointed out I had not found the main entrance and had been tricked into thinking I had. So he walked me around the corner to the main gate which was far more interesting. Here there were a string of tourist buses and lots of Indonesian tourists as well. After touring the palace and grounds on my own, I met my new friend and he toured me through the residential areas with very old construction, fruit trees, and small lanes within the walls of the palace grounds. I think we must of walked for a couple of hours or more. I even saw the first privately built mosque built in the city. Unlike the mosques in Istanbul, Turkey, I was not welcome to enter.
I enjoyed walking around with my Dutch friends. Rixt and Peter, who are both over 6 feet tall and really stand out, especially Rixt with her "big" hair and bare shoulders. We met coming from the beach on the bus and train. When I was with them I was not hassled and people wanted to have their pictures taken with them instead of me (which often happens when I am alone). But I have enjoyed the easy exchanges with Indonesians even when they cannot speak English and I cannot speak Indonesian. On a superficial level, we still communicate interest and friendliness. But I have grown weary of the bicycle OJs who want to provide my transportation: Where are you from, where are you going, transport, get in, OK, etc., hundreds of time a day as I walk up and down most of the streets in the center. There are also lots of horse carts but they don't pester me.
The area around the train station is the backpacker ghetto with lots of restaurants and hotels located on and between the two streets south of the train station. Marlboro is the main street north-south and goes south from the train station area to the Sultan's Palace. At night, this month, there is a night market inside the grounds and in front of the Palace area with lots of food, rides for the kids, games of chance, etc. like a country fair.
While my last report was titled "The Beaches of Pangandran" you pointed out I didn't really talk about the beaches. Not a lot to say really. There is a peninsula that narrows going south, and then widens a bit with the southern tip being a protected area for hiking and bird watching. North of the protected area there are beaches on the west and east side, with the west side being a more typical sandy beach while the east side having more boats and a rocky waterfront, with perhaps the rocks being placed there to protect the land from storms and erosion. I stayed on the sandy side, where most of the foreign tourists stayed, but enjoyed visiting the rocky side for the activity and the local tourists.
Typical beach town environment, lots of restaurants and hotels, bike, motorbike and surfboard rentals. The town had been completely destroyed by the 2006 tsunami. My third fish dinner was a winner. In my last report I mentioned I had stopped to talk to an unusual guy with long hair who turned out to be building a house for his family in the middle of a rice paddy, on concrete and steel posts, in the country side away from the beach. He was an interesting guy and had backpacked around most of Asia, which seems rare for Indonesians. His wife was the head chef at one of the bigger hotels. He was visiting his friend who was running the restaurant and I asked about fish. The Chef gave me an offer I couldn't refuse: If I didn't like it, I didn't have to pay for it. And he claimed his fish to be the best in town. OK. I agree - and every night from then till I left, I had one of his fish dinners, with the exception of the night I order fresh shrimp. Pan cooked in a tomato/garlic/(ginger?) based sauce that was wonderful over the rice. Plenty of cooked tomatoes, onion and garlic as well as some other vegetables. His son would take me places when I needed to find something and I got to know both of them because they could speak some English. The son was in college in 2006 when the tsunami hit, killing about 600 people and wiping out the town along with the jobs based on tourism. He had been in town but on a higher point when the wave hit and saw it roll in. His father's restaurant was destroyed and there were no tourists to cook for, so he couldn't continue in college. He hopes to return in a year or two.
I enjoyed taking walks on the beach, walks in the protected park, bicycling into the country side, wandering around the small town, talking to other travelers and local tourists, and reading my book on my netbook, staying until I had completed all 790 pages of the Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. It was a well written book, suspenseful, and I learned a lot about World War I history.
Isn't that what a week at the beach is all about?
So roughly a week in the big city of Jakarta, a week at the beach of Pangandran and a week in the City of Yogyakarta. I am tired, would like a change to a smaller environment so maybe I am ready for Tretes. In a couple of more weeks I must leave Indonesia because of the two month limit on the visa. I have a boat ticket from Batam to Singapore so I will fly to Batam or Singapore. Undecided at this time. I would like to travel slower but even with two months for Sumatra and Java, I have a sense that I can not just hang out but need to move on. Never enough time for me but for many, perhaps it would be too much time.
Before ending this I wanted to discuss a little about the differences between home and here for bicyclists. I have seen more and more bicyclists so it is possible to bicycle in Indonesia. However a couple of our rules will not work here. In the US when there is not enough room in the lane for a bike and a car, bicyclists can "take the lane" which keeps the cars from trying to pass when there is not enough room to do so. Trying to take the lane here would be a joke. While most roads have no line between the lanes, on those that do it is only a guideline. I have been in situations where the vehicle I am in is passing another vehicle and a motor scooter might be passing us at the same time, while coming towards us are other motorcycles passing vehicles and there may be pedestrians on both sides of the road. Taking the lane would not work and would be dangerous. If you can get your "nose of the camel" in front of someone else, then they are expected to let you in, and if they didn't then there would be all kinds of accidents. But I have not seen any accidents at all! Chaos, but it seems safe. Everyone drives defensively. And there doesn't seem to be any road rage or "I have the right of way." And of course they drive on the "wrong" side of the road like the British, so passing another bicyclist and saying "On your left" would be the wrong thing to say. My bike mirror would need to be reversed and I would have to learn to look over my right shoulder instead of my left. Difficult habits to change. When walking I have to really think about which way to look when I cross a road. But I can walk in congested areas now and have biked in slow traffic. There is no such thing as a pedestrian advocate here. I could have a whole new career.
Love and miss you,
Ron
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Last updated: 5 February 2011
